Comparative studies of financial systems often distinguish between bank- and market-based systems. However, under the pressure of financialisation a homogenisation of national finan-cial systems towards Anglo-Saxon financial market capitalism is expected. The global financial crisis of 2008 has affected both bank-based and market-based financial systems; so that the crisis can be seen as proof for the levelling of national finance. But there are some puzzles in this story. Firstly, a growth of bank-based finance in some marked-based countries can be seen (e.g. lending to companies in the UK) and secondly we observe strong differences in the per-formance of national financial systems during and especially after the crisis. So for example no credit crunch can be detected in Germany. Because of these observations, we consider wheth-er the old classification in bank- and market-based systems does not account for all relevant national differences. So from a spatial point of view, we discuss an alternative classification of financial systems in decentralized vs. centralized systems. We propose geographical market orientation, understood as the geographical extension of the financial institutes' market area (local vs. international) and special knowledge generating and decision making of the financial institutes (on the spot vs. at a distance), as two distinctive but related factors to classify finan-cial intermediaries. According to these factors, the German savings and cooperative banks can be classified as decentralized financial intermediaries and due to their high and growing im-portance, the German financial system may be called highly decentralized from an interna-tional point of view. In this paper, we discuss the outlined classification and highlight pros and cons of decentralized versus centralized financial intermediation. Furthermore, we present empirical facts from Germany underlining our argumentation, discuss a possible application of the outlined concept for cross country studies and highlight limits and open questions of the concept.